Seattle Times
For each of the 25,000 runners who entered Saturday’s race, there was a story. There was the woman recovering from gastric-bypass surgery. The man trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon. The person tap-dancing for 13.1 miles. For most of them, Seattle’s largest-ever marathon unfolded with few hitches. The weather was sunny, the route along Lake Washington offered spectacular views, and the event was choreographed with precision. The music on 27 stages — featuring local Seattle bands— ranged from reggae and rock to alternative.

Seattle Times
The fourth annual Georgetown Music Festival took place Saturday, with 25 Seattle bands playing three outdoor stages in the offbeat, postindustrial Georgetown enclave south of downtown Seattle. Up until last month, however, it was dead and buried. “We didn’t have the money,” says Stefan Schachtell, who, along with Kate Fernandez, organizes the fete. With some savvy partnerships, the renewed support of local businesses, and a lot of extra effort, Schachtell and Fernandez rescued their baby. Through a newly established nonprofit called the Music Stimulus Package, the pair won an $8,000 grant from city-run 4Culture. They teamed up with Artopia, the three-year-old urban-arts fair sponsored by Seattle Weekly, to piggyback on their advertising and infrastructure.

Seattle Times
Northwest Film Forum will host a special celebration of and fitting tribute to the great entertainer and popular music icon Michael Jackson who passed away on June 25th at the age of 50. His greatest music videos from the late-’70s and ’80s will be shown in the cinema (and cranked up loud). NWFF will also show excerpts of a 1968 performance of the Jackson 5, his performance in the 1978 musical “The Wiz,” the unavailable 1983 documentary “The Making Of Michael Jackson’s Thriller” and the 1983 TV performance that introduced the “moonwalk.” Refreshments will be available in the cinema, and all ages are welcome. Join us raising a glass to the one and only King of Pop, seeing Michael’s moves in action, and shaking a behind to the music that moved the world. (Seating is limited. Tickets can be purchased in advance at http://www.nwfilmforum.org and we suggest arriving early.)

Hollywood Reporter
Boldness is increasingly common among a segment of the otherwise-depressed indie-distributor world, where unlikely players with unorthodox attitudes suddenly are filling the landscape.Execs from gay-oriented media company Here! are getting into the foreign-film business. National Geographic, best known for eat-your-vegetables nature documentaries, is snatching up Sundance dramas for theatrical release, as it did with Cherien Dabis’ immigrant-themed crowd-pleaser “Amreeka.” Traditional players, meanwhile, are furiously trying to reinvent themselves and come up with new ideas. Case in point: Ira Deutchman and his Emerging Pictures aims to outfit art house theaters with digital projectors that will allow exhibitors to break the rigid and expensive 35mm model. Together, they form what might be called the new indie coterie, a mixture of savvy veterans and eager newcomers who see opportunity in a specialty world where studios only have seen losses. For more on this story, follow the link